WI11: Richard Russo, Douglas Preston on Amazon - Shelf-Awareness

Panzer is fighting a kitty cold, so today's trip into the Catosphere was very quick. Our sniffling, coughing Panzermobile pilot stopped in at the Shelf-Awareness site to get more information on the Winter Institute 11 (WI11).

At the ShelfAwareness site in between achoos our sick kitty traveler found a post about Authors United founder and author Douglas Preston, American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher, and Authors Guild Vice-president and author Richard Russo's round table assault on Amazon. Panzer already posted on January 26 about the WI11 and the American Book Sellers report that told about Amazon's $1 Billion Tax Gap created by retail businesses not opening and not hiring employees. Apparently the round table discussion was a rehash of Mr. Preston and Authors United's push to get the Department of Justice to investigate Amazon as a monopoly.

There are better uses of my time.

Panzer says, "Maybe they need a new hobby ... like writing books. Just a suggestion. I'm writing a new book and there's no time for me to obsess about Amazon."

Note: You'll need a cup of tea and a muffin to read the Shelf-Awareness post. If you plan to read Panzer's first post about WI11, you'll need another cup of tea.

To read the Shelf-Awareness post, tootle over to Winter Institute 11

To read the post about the American Booksellers Association report on Amazon, tootle over to Amazon report

Winter Institute 11: Report Finds $1 Billion Tax Gap Caused by Amazon - PW (Publishers' Weekly)

Panzer was tootling around in the Catosphere when he heard crying and the gnashing of teeth. Following all the noise took him to the Publishers' Weekly online site. There our brave kitty explorer found a post by Claire Kirch about the Winter Institute 11 conference.

The post is about a report presented to the attendees at Winter Institute 11. Prepared by the American Booksellers Association and Civic Economics, the report says 23 states and Washington, D.C. do not collect sales tax from Amazon.com. It also says because of the sales at Amazon.com and other online retailers an estimated 30,000 retail businesses were not opened and property taxes not collected from them. Also, 136,000 jobs were not created by those non-existent companies. And, finally, the report says all of the sales taxes, non-existent businesses and non-existent jobs add up to $1 Billion dollars Amazon (and the other unnamed online retailers) have cost.

My head hurts just thinking about it.

Panzer says, "I don't understand human math. If the companies don't exist, how can you know what size they would use for their store? And how can you know, if something doesn't exist. how many employees they didn't hire? And ... Sales Tax? If you didn't collect it, how do you know how much it was?  Nothing plus Nothing plus Nothing equals $1 Billion?"

Note: You'll need a cup of tea and two muffins for your reading today.

To read the post, tootle over to Winter Institute 11